


To love and To Lose

by Raufnir



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Elf, Elven, Flotsam - Freeform, Fluff, Geralt is bi, Geralt loves anyone deserving, Iorveth is a stubborn elf, Love the idea of these two, M/M, Scars, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Witcher - Freeform, Witcher II, based on the game scenes in Flotsam, scoia'tael - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-10-11 01:40:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10452123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raufnir/pseuds/Raufnir
Summary: Geralt finds himself drawn to the mysterious, scarred leader of the Scoia'tael. He wonders whether the hard commander will let himself relax enough to give himself to Geralt, while the two battle in the forests around Flotsam, trying to outwit the mysterious kingslayer Letho and the obnoxious Bernard Letho. Who knew all it would take would be for Geralt to risk flames and death to rescue captured elven women for Iorveth to warm to him?





	1. Chapter 1

Rivers flowed red with elven blood, and life was cheaper than a fist full of coppers. Sometimes even less than that.

 

When he’d rounded that corner and seen the silhouette of the elf playing that damned flute, perched high on a log, dressed in green, he’d snorted. Hanging back from Roche and Triss a moment, Geralt marvelled at the guy’s arrogance. He was taking evident delight in fulfilling the stereotype of all things elven to the letter: the wooden flute, the forest-green getup, the fancy bow, and of course, the flare for the dramatic when he stood and introduced Roche and all his glorious achievements like some mummer in a town square. He fulfilled that elven stereotype in all ways but one: the natural beauty he had clearly been born with had been torn from his face and his features by a horrific event, and even at that distance as he stood on the fallen tree, drawing himself up to his full six foot height, his scars were clearly visible.

Geralt’s cat eyes went first to what was visible of his mangled face beneath the blood red bandana. They took in that smart-guy posturing, the expressive hands and cocky angle of his head and neck against his shoulders. His attention was next caught by the collection of heraldic badges on the leather strap that slashed across his torso. A collection not quite complete. The elf’s voice was harsh, deep, and full of the anger of a marginalised, hunted people. His slow, sarcastic clap rubbed salt in Roche’s smarting pride.

He didn’t seem to like it when Geralt called him out on his choice of assassin, folding his arms and sneering down his nose. He also didn’t miss the look that flitted through his forest green eye when he implied that the scoia’tael were merely tools, being used by someone more powerful. He refused to meet the witcher’s eye while Geralt snarled, “Nilfguard ploughed you once, now someone new does. Am I wrong?”

“Those times are gone. No one will ever use the scoia’tael again,” he countered, deep, heartfelt anger simmering in his expression. His red bandana may have hidden his disfigurement, but it didn’t hide his discomfort. He had to hand it to the elf though; he cared deeply for his cause.

“Who are you addressing?” Geralt rumbled calmly. “Me? Yourself? Or the archers in those shrubs?”

Iorveth looked like he’d been about to give a reply, but Roche reached for the throwing dagger at his right hip and sent it flashing through the air at the elf in a fit of impatience and anger. Iorveth was forced to spin away, somewhat inelegantly in Geralt’s experience of the grace of the elves, perhaps tripping on a branch or something. Stupid elves. That’s what you get for prancing about trying to enact stereotypes.

With a sharply barked order from Iorveth, Geralt heard a whole troop’s worth of elves shift in the bushes, bowstrings stretching, arrows notching. He drew his one remaining sword from the scabbard on his back, still furious that his other one, his precious silver blade from Kaer Morhen was lodged firmly in a dragon’s maul, and Roche drew his, both men instinctively placing themselves between the arrows and Triss behind them.

As it happened, they needn’t have worried about the arrows, because his medallion hummed and a thousand golden butterflies spun and fluttered before their eyes as the eleven volley arced overhead and disappeared. Her golden dome of protection kept them safe from the arrows but it had cost her.

Geralt saw the vague, blank look creep over her beautiful eyes, and smelled the blood in her nose before he saw it. “Triss? Are you alright?”

“Lovely,” murmured the sorceress, before she twisted limply into his arms. He let his blade fall to catch her before she hit the deck. He nearly grabbed his sword again though when Roche, the shit-filled windbag, remarked that she should have charmed the archers instead, but he ground his teeth and set his jaw while Roche swept Triss up in a farmer’s lift like she were just a sack of flour and proceeded to make comments about her anatomy as he bore her towards the safety of the town ahead.

Her magical barrier held while they made it to Flotsam, but, looking back over his shoulder, he caught sight of the tall, lean elven commander nodding his head authoritatively at his archers, jutting his high cheekbones and sneering down at the trio on the path below. Then an absolute mountain of meat stumped into view on the last rocky promontory overlooking the trading town and stood shoulder to shoulder beside the elf.

The dockside chaos and ships’ bells rang too loudly, and his ears couldn’t catch their words. But Geralt wouldn’t forget the elf and his harsh voice, caustic and full of anger.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet Cedric, Geralt ploughs Triss amongst the roses, and finally gets a step closer to Iorveth.

Cedric was a little easier to talk to, though no less full of elven pomp. Trees shot towards the sky, steady as monoliths, wreathed in green, sheltering the outskirts of Lobinden, but the atmosphere was still close and suffocating, and Geralt’s skin crawled, knowing that the woods were full of angry Scoia’tael warriors, lurking just out of sight and hearing. He warmed to the elf he had come to see as he approached on the wooden lookout and he couldn’t help feeling that Cedric’s advice to his grieving friend was well-meant and came from the heart. “Hatred is but an outlet for helplessness.” He had a point.

Cedric’s haughty expression belied a kind heart, and the elf was forthcoming with information in the kayran contract. Geralt’s nose didn’t miss the scent of vodka on Cedric’s breath, though, and he wondered if the stories about his visions of the future were true. Once he had stopped rolling his eyes at the long-winded drawl with which the elf spoke, the witcher stomped off through the forest. With Cedric’s help, he and the shifty sorceress dispatched the poor, cancer-ridden monster. Not that having Sile scream instructions at him from the safety of the ruins had been in any way helpful during the fight.

Gods, that thing smelled so bad. He'd spent nearly half his reward on being bathed in the tavern, but it was worth it to feel clean again, and it was nice to have at least a little support from the inhabitants of Flotsam for ridding them of a dangerous nuisance.

A later mission to the ruins of Cáelmewedd ended with a much more favourable reward than being up to his ears in kaylan blood, mucous and guts. Being trapped in the ruins of an elven bathhouse was far better. He wasn't just trapped. He was trapped in there with Triss. It was wrong, he knew, because he knew he was bound to Yennifer, if not explicitly, but fuck, if Triss wasn’t the most gorgeous, flame-haired woman he’d ever seen. And she was kind too; not just to him, but to Ciri as well. 

Perhaps it was the heady scent of roses in the air, or the way Triss’ hair looked even redder in that light, but whatever it was, he couldn't get his mind to focus on anything else. He had to admit that he lost it altogether when, after a short and suitably smutty exchange about bathing, Triss strode past him, tossing a doe-eyed look over her shoulder, and then proceeded to remove her clothes with a crackling, purple spell that made his medallion shiver and his blood rush to his groin. Damn, that girl knew how to put on a show. She was flawless.

Robbed, like his pure white hair, of its natural, warm pigment, his own rough hide was slashed all over with thickly corded scars and burns, cuts and stab wounds, but Triss’ perfect was a dream. The sounds she made for him must have filled the forest for miles around. He couldn’t help but smirk as he ploughed into her, ramming his cock deep inside her, thinking that any prudish elves or eavesdroppers hanging around nearby would blush if they happened to stumble upon them.

“We should take baths more often,” Triss said when they were finally sated, her voice sly and lyrical. “For a while there, I forgot all about Flotsam, the scoia’tael, the kingslayer, about the whole world really.”

His ego enjoyed the post-coital stroking. “Nice to know I still have that power,” he smirked. Too bad she was ruining it in only a few minutes’ time by blabbering about coming to Kaer Morhen, and being with him, even admitting that Yennifer could always come first. Clearing his name came first. He was not fleeing with his tail between his legs just so his reputation could lie in ruins for the sake of living the life domestic with her. He was not giving up. He needed to get another meeting with that arrogant elf again.

After Triss had spoiled the end of their lovely encounter among the roses, walking around Flotsam set him in a terrible mood. The constant barrage of comments from the inhabitants, flung casually like shit out of windows, about the non-humans and the supposed problems they all caused started to wear thin on Geralt. Zoltan was his friend, and more often than not it was those humans, who were so adept at complaining, who were the ones causing all the misery and suffering, not the non-humans. So as he followed Zoltan out through the muddy streets towards the forest, he was ready to whip his steel sword out and lop off the next “Goat’s arse in a helmet”, as the dwarf so eloquently put it, that hollered some obscenity.

The meeting with the scoia’tael was tense, and the elves were prickly as an endrega and twice as poisonous. Zoltan calling him paranoid did nothing to improve Geralt’s mood, so when the elves melted out of the trees, so swaggering and cocksure, he decided just to bite his tongue and let Zoltan do the talking. But he just couldn’t help himself when it seemed that the little shit with the fancy collar wasn’t going to take them to Iorveth. “If we wanted to speak with you, we wouldn’t ask for your leader,” he said, endeavouring to keep his voice steady, and proud that it came out as only mildly patronising.

“Iorveth won’t talk with you.”

“You don’t know that,” he countered.

“Leave, while you’re still able,” the elf sneered, crossing his arms and resting his weight on one leg as he surveyed the pair of them.

“The two of you won’t scare us off,” Zoltan blustered.

The elf continued to regard the dwarf like he had just scraped him off the bottom of his shoe. _Look all you like_ , Geralt thought, _look while you still have sight in that pretty elven face of yours_. This one had the same high elven cheekbones that they all had, the same arrogant set of the mouth, the same old eyes in a young face. _Alright_ , Gerald smiled to himself, letting his sharp hearing take better stock of his surroundings, _time to watch this little cocker deflate a bit_.

He narrowed his cat eyes. “There are four more in that tree,” he rasped, taking particular delight in the wide-eyed expression that plastered itself across the elf’s face.

“How do you know?” he breathed, slack-jawed and stupid. It wasn’t a look that suited him, but Geralt too pleasure in it all the same.

“I can hear them breathing. One’s sick, or on fisstech…”

“How?”

 _Close your mouth, or flies will get in._ “He’s wheezing,” he said as though the elf were a particularly dim novice at Kaer Morhen.

Showing him up in front of the pretty, dark-eyed she-elf obviously did the trick, because they found themselves waiting for the leader to show up, standing at the edge of a cliff in the clearing that wreaked of ambush. Even the dwarf could smell it. There was the carcass of a nekker amongst the rocks on the far side, and Geralt knew what lurked there. The close atmosphere was heavy with the pungent smell of arachas venom. He shrugged and assumed his more habitual role; that of a witcher. Just another monster to be dispatched. Zoltan stepped back nervously as Geralt vaulted silently down into the clearing and waited for the creature to make itself known.

It wasn’t a particularly difficult fight, not after the kayran, but it smelled disgusting, and venom dripped and sprayed from its mandibles, flecking onto Geralt’s face and stinging as it fizzled through the thin layer of linen at his cuffs, just below his armoured jerkin. It didn’t take long to finish the monster though.

Once the creature was down, elves sprang down out of nowhere like spiders, and out of the ranks strode the most cocksure of the lot of them, Iorveth. Geralt climbed back up onto the rock above the little arena, and instinctively moved Zoltan behind him, shielding him with his body, not knowing how the infamous leader of the scoia’tael would react to the dwarf bringing an outsider, even if Geralt wasn’t _quite_ human, into their midst.

With his blood pumping from the fight, even with the stench of insectoid venom clinging to him, he felt that familiar pooling in his groin. He couldn’t help it. The need for sex after a fight was common to all men, and something that even his mutations hadn’t ‘evolved’ out of him. And the calm, almost lazy control with which the elf assumed the vantage point and began to lecture him, patronise him, made him want to reach out and wrap his hands around the elf and force him to submit that control to him. He swallowed and forced his brain to listen to the words and not the voice.

“A lovely show, Gwynbleidd,” he drawled, the sarcasm just keeping his voice from sounding too appreciative, “But tell me, was it worth it?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

The elf loved to be in control, flexing his muscles and the strength of his commando in front of the witcher, even taking delight in spitting the word ‘ _vatt’ghern_ ’ at him. The creak of bows filled his ears, his senses still thrumming from the confrontation with the arachas.

Geralt weighed the situation and chose his words carefully. “Letho betrayed you. He wanted to make a deal with your comrade, Ciaran.”

“Ciaran aep Easnillien is dead.” The elf didn’t flinch, and his words were hard, his voice flat and dead. Just another notch in the running tally of scoia'tael dead. “Two weeks ago his warriors were ambushed and killed. You should invent better lies, Gwynbleidd.”

Something about the way he stepped towards him, that extra flare of bravado, made Geralt’s instincts crawl. The intensity in his single green eye burned, and his mouth went rigid when he’d finished speaking. Geralt wondered if he ever let _anything_ crack that outer shell, that hard armour, or if it was easier for the commander not to let himself grieve for his warriors in a war that must take elves from him on an almost daily basis. Geralt spoke again, his voice even and calm, respectful almost. “He’s on the barge, wounded but alive.”

Then something did flicker in his expression. Grief? Rage? Regret? Whatever it was, it was gone, galloping away faster than the Wild Hunt through the sky.

Geralt pushed on. “He turned Letho down, and his unit paid the ultimate price.”

Then the elf’s face fell. He seemed to be fighting down a surge of emotion as he stared at the ground beside Geralt’s boots, and was silent a long time. Geralt didn’t take his eyes off that face. He _couldn’t_. The moonlight flashed on his cheekbones and proud nose, casting strong shadows down the hollows of his cheeks, contrasting with the dark hair that peeked out from under the bandana. He wanted to reach out and clasp him by the shoulder, offer comfort to a man who clearly suffered greatly at the news. But he didn’t. He remained solid as a monolith. Watching. Waiting. Waiting to hear that rasping voice again.

“If you speak the truth, Letho will die,” he rasped, and Geralt believed him. “But words alone are not enough.”

As if on some silent command, bows sighed as strings were relaxed and arrows were set back in quivers. But Iorveth did not relax. Geralt asked if he still trusted the assassin Letho, and he fairly spat his response back at him, raising his hand and jabbing an accusatory finger in the witcher’s face. “You may be lying.”

“If _I’m_ lying, so did _Ciaran_ ,” he countered. The elf on the barge was clearly a dear friend to Iorveth and he was not above using it as leverage.

“We’ll investigate it for his sake,” he said, his voice emptying again of emotions as he regained control of himself. “We shall see how Letho reactions to your sensational news.”

“Where is he?”

He was getting to the elf. Unable to look at him, or even stand near him, Iorveth bobbed on the balls of his feet and turned away, perhaps hiding his emotions from the quick-eyed witcher as he wondered whether to trust him. “The ruins of Cáelmewedd,” he finally admitted. “For some reason he likes the place. My unit will cover us. Ready?”

He just assumed that Geralt would go with him then and there, without giving it another thought? Iorveth fixed the witcher with his steady, cold glare, but Geralt wasn’t ready to let him go without a little more information. “What’s your angle, Iorveth?” He liked the way the man’s name felt in his mouth. He wondered if other things belonging to him would feel just as good.

The elf shook his head. It might have looked like a gesture of scorn, but it read to Geralt more like helplessness. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Hiding in woods, killing berry-pickers, eating roots…” he jibed.

“We live by our own rules, doing what’s necessary to attain our goal.” A hollow mantra that meant nothing. But he was clearly not about to have his cause questioned in front of his men by a stranger, and Geralt admired him for that.

Geralt also enjoyed getting under that cold skin of his. “And what is your goal?”

“What’s it to you, Geralt?” he said after a little pause. It was the first time he’d heard his name on the elf’s lips. Somehow he made it sound almost refined, but it was swiftly followed by an insult in the elf’s own tongue, and he added, “You’d tell me to stuff it up my arse.”

Geralt’s face cracked into a rare smile but he hid his amusement quickly. “Not everything deserves that fate.” But it got him thinking. Quickly forcing his mind off that side track, he went on, playing submissive. “My life now depends on your whim, so I’m curious.”

“Then listen well. The two dead kings were whoresons who’d damn their own children to stay in power. But in the east there’s someone truly deserving of a crown.”

Well, wasn’t that an interesting turn of events. Instead of pressing to find out who this person was who had won Iorveth’s affection, he settled for a jab. “So the hired assassin turned out to be a traitor.”

“It’s his word against yours,” Iorveth sneered in a perfect and precise counter.

“For now,” Geralt said flatly. “Why do you trust him?”

“He did what had to be done. He proved nobody’s untouchable.”

So the elf picked a dh’oine with a lofty position to prove his point: that they could attack anyone, anywhere, at any time. The witcher had to hand it to him, the plan had flare. But it was a plan that had dragged his own name through the mud, and he wasn’t about to let the real kingslayer get away with it. Even if Letho was hiding behind this particularly pretty elf’s green skirts.

As they made their way through the forest in silence, Geralt wondered who it was that had captured Iorveth’s prickly heart and fired him up to go to such lengths. Whoever it was, he couldn’t help the stab of jealousy. What would it take, he wondered, to get Iorveth to open up to someone. It only made him more determined.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Geralt and Iorveth confront Letho, and binding Iorveth up gives Geralt an idea or two.

Iorveth, striding silent as a shadow through the trees ahead of him, never glanced back. He spoke softly to his second in command, but their whispered words were swallowed by the forest. Geralt’s white hair shone like moonlight between the trees, but the green padded jackets of the elves and their dark hair made sure they belonged in the forest like moss on tree bark. Only Iorveth’s blood red bandana blazed brightly.

He wondered what lay beneath it. Did he still have his eye, milky and blind, or was it just an empty hole. Geralt was no stranger to scars, and he was anything but squeamish, but the way the elf’s lips were twisted up into a permanent sneer fired his curiosity. Whoever had done that to him had enjoyed it. They’d taken their time, cutting his cheek open like they’d been gutting a fish. The old wound forked up his face like a red lightning bolt, and disappeared beneath the swathes of thick, red cloth bound around his right cheek and eye.

Geralt’s own scar on his left cheek, bent like a fish hook, looked like a papercut by comparison. He gave an expansive sigh without realising it, and was surprised when Iorveth stopped and turned. “Tired, witcher?” he drawled, that scarred right lip hoisting itself up a little higher.

He cracked his neck nonchalantly and realised as he cast his mind back that it had been over three days since he’d last slept. When he said as much, but accompanied the news with a casual shrug, the commander’s fierce gaze faltered a little. Surely not a moment of sympathy? “That’s nothing,” Geralt mumbled, thinking of his training at Kaer Morhen. “Trust me, I’ve gone a lot longer in the past. I won’t mess this up for you just because I’ve missed a spot of beauty sleep.” He snorted, and added, “Gods know my tattered hide could use some though.”

The single green eye narrowed, and the commander returned Geralt’s neck crack by lacing his fingers together behind his back and realigning his vertebrae in a rapid-fire popping that filled the small space between them. He grunted at the release in tension and Geralt wondered how tight his shoulder and neck muscles must be. The elf was lean and lithe as a ship’s rope, but he bet the muscles could use a good loosening. Heck, his own muscles certainly could, and also he ached for a different kind of release now as well.

They pushed on, encountering three endriga scuttling about in the undergrowth which were quickly dispatched from a distance by two of Iorveth’s sharpest shooters. Geralt hadn’t even had time to close his fingers around the hilt of his new silver sword before the creatures were lying in a smouldering pile of their own acid. With a wry smile he turned to Iorveth, who happened to be beside him and said, “Your archers truly deserve their reputation.”

He accepted the compliment with a surprisingly soft smile, but offered no other comment.

Beside a crashing waterfall near the elven ruins of which their kingslayer, Letho, was apparently so fond, Iorveth halted and nodded once at his warriors. His wordless command saw them bow in response, and slide off into the trees. When they were gone, Iorveth told Geralt his plan. “We’ll need a ruse. Tell Letho you’ve captured me and want to hand me over to him.”

His throat went dry at the thought of laying hands on the elf. And perhaps Iorveth caught something in his silence because he gave a wry smile. Geralt knew he had to say something before he gave himself away. “And you?” he asked stupidly.

The arrogant way he cocked his eyebrow told him all he needed to know. Iorveth’s voice was low, silky, and his words spilled off his tongue in a sweet, swift rush. “I’ll be unarmed, hands bound…” Now wouldn’t that be a sight? But the elf wasn’t stupid, and Geralt realised he’d missed the last few words before the elf snapped, “I don’t trust you, of course. My warriors will cover us. If you try anything stupid…”

“I get it,” Geralt grumbled.

And then Iorveth laughed for the first time. It was a quick, short little thing, with the lifespan of a mayfly, and it was swiftly followed by a condescending, “I don’t think so.” Oh boy, did this elf love his control. He wondered what it’d be like to have the elf give _him_ that control. He didn’t have time to fantasise further before Iorveth was speaking again, a true smirk on his lips. “Do anything stupid, and they’ll tie you down on an anthill, face coated with honey. You’ll scream so loud even the storm riders will hear you.”

Geralt snorted. “Are you always so grandiose?”

Iorveth narrowed his eye and it looked almost like a wink.

“We could just tell Letho to own up.”

He rocked carelessly on his feet again and smirked, “ _Ayd f’haeil moen Hirjeth taenwerde_.”

Cocky shit. If he thought Geralt couldn’t understand the elder speech, he was wrong. It wasn’t the first time someone had tried to pull the wool over his eyes with the language, and he wasn’t going to let it slide now. “Conquer with courage rather than strength.” he said archly.

Iorveth’s condescending clap of approval only riled him further, but the tone he used was less bitter. “Exactly,” he said lightly. “Let’s go.”

He and Geralt approached the path to the ruins alone while the rest of the company spread out, shinning silently up the trees like the true squirrels they were. Even Geralt with his witcher’s hearing couldn’t pick them out from the other sounds of the forest. “Your men are like ghosts,” he said approvingly keeping his voice low as they stepped onto the path that led to the summit. He passed a place of power where the air rippled beside a huge standing stone, and he felt his senses grow stronger because of it. It also did strange things to his nether regions, though perhaps that came from being alone with the elf.

“My warriors are not _men_ , vatt’ghern,” Iorveth spat derisively. “They are _Aen Seidhe_. Now, what are you going to use to tie my wrists?”

Geralt bit his lip as a slightly different image flashed before him, but turned it into a thoughtful expression before he let his arousal show on his face. “I’ve got a spare belt in my bag,” he said, rummaging around in the depths of his small travel sack. “That ought to do.”

Iorveth looked at him long and hard, and then, inhaling just once, turned around and crossed his wrists behind him. It seemed to take a lot for the commander to relinquish his power to Geralt, and Geralt repaid his gift with gentleness. He knew something had happened to the elf, something dreadful that had been done to him against his will. He knew the look in his one remaining eye, and the proud, defensive set of his shoulders. His suffering was written in stark, red lettering on his face.

He took the elf’s slender wrist in his rough palm and marvelled at the narrow grace of it, the delicacy of the bones, the lean strength of the fingers which curled almost like the petals of a flower. The skin on the inside of Iorveth’s wrist was softer than anything Geralt had ever touched – even Triss’ skin was not so smooth – but the callouses on the elf’s hands evidenced long years of weapons training.

Geralt bound first the left and then the right wrist, looping the cord back over both and knotting it well and tightly, though not cruelly. It did have to be believable after all. With the elf bound and trussed, he pushed him in front of him. Losing the use of his arms cost the elf his grace and he stumbled a little, but Geralt had hold of him tightly, and didn’t let him fall.

The witcher would have been lying if he’d said he didn’t enjoy having someone at his mercy. Although the people who had made him, mutated him, had stripped him of his ability to enjoy killing, they had not relieved him of his alpha male dominance. Perhaps it came from losing control of his life at such a young age, having no choice but to relinquish himself to the witcher’s path, or perhaps it had always been in his nature to be so, but either way he was a dominant soul if ever there was one.

But while he could happily glut himself on the taste of power, he never got off on fear. It wasn’t about frightening people, or _taking_ something from someone that wasn’t his to begin with. It was about the trust. Geralt really got off on trust. Triss trusted him enough to bare her body naked in the blink of an eye and open herself up to him in a strange bathhouse, deep in scoia’tael territory. She trusted him to protect her when she was at her most vulnerable. The fact that she _gave_ herself to him in the truest sense of the word was what did it: she entrusted her safety, her entire being, body and mind, to Geralt. He felt his groin tightening at the thought as he held the scoia’tael commander in his grasp.

Before he had time to dwell too long on his cock, the commander stumbled again and he was forced to lunge to catch him before he fell and messed up his face even further. With one hand hooked around his upper chest, fingers pressed hard over his collarbones, right beneath his neck, and the other hand yanking the bindings back, Geralt froze for a long moment. “Careful,” he warned.

“Back off, vatt’ghern,” he snarled, immediately on the defensive, setting his feet in a more stable posture.

“Alright,” Geralt rumbled waspishly, “Next time I’ll let you fall, and you can even up that pretty face of yours.”

Iorveth lunged at him with a hissing, spitting, wordless snarl, long, elven canines snapping as he bared his teeth in the witcher’s face.

Geralt, taken by surprise, stepped back. “Easy,” he murmured. “And I’m sorry. I overstepped the mark.”

“Too right you did, dh’oine,” Iorveth panted through clenched teeth, chest heaving. “I should have you shot.”

And then he realised the show of power was a cover for his unease. What was it Cedric's had said? _Hatred is an outlet for helplessness._ Iorveth wasn’t used to being out of control. He was frightened.

Geralt saw his own reflection in the single, black pupil, blown wide with emotion. “Alright,” he said, lowering his eyes and his voice, stepping closer, and gently pushing the elf forward again with his body. “Come on. Let’s get this over with so we get you out of these bindings.”

He slowed the pace fractionally, and remained with his shoulder and chest close to Iorveth’s side, steadying him with his body as they made the last few scrambles up the rocky path to the top. Now he used his body as a buttress to catch and steady the elf instead of bumping him around unnecessarily. He only moved away from Iorveth’s side when the pair were almost in front of the archway that led into the ruins. Although he never admitted it, Iorveth seemed grateful for his presence on the uneven path, for catching him and for his strong hands on his shoulders, arms and waist.

“Be careful. Letho is incredibly quick,” the elf hissed as they paced between the sunlit limestone boulders.

The huge man was indeed surprised to see the woodland fox bound up and delivered to him like a parcel on winter solstice. They really sold their performance to him as Geralt added a little more flair than was absolutely necessary, and shoved Iorveth down hard into the dirt so that he fell onto his knees and gasped in surprise. Iorveth easily levered himself upright without the use of his hands and fixed Geralt with a caustic glare that could have turned mountains to sand.

“I’m here to negotiate,” Geralt said bullishly as he stared at the enormous man in front of him.

Those eyes. It had been a long time since he’d stared into the eerie yellow eyes of a fellow mutant, and in that face, under that hulking great skull, they looked doubly wrong, doubly unnatural. The soft voice that came out of the bruiser of a man was also deeply unsettling. “Who _are_ you?” Geralt demanded.

“You really don’t remember?”

“I’m sick of that question,” he spat.

“So it’s true. And here I feared that you would ruin it all.” He surveyed the two of them and introduced himself as Letho of Gulet, kingslayer.

Iorveth flexed his sore muscles and demanded to be released, but the two witchers exchanged a look and Geralt decided he wanted more. “Tell me who you’re working for and the elf is yours.” He didn’t miss the panic that flared on the elf’s face at his apparent betrayal.

“We work for ourselves,” the answer came, and a thrill of fear knotted itself in Geralt’s stomach too.

“ _We_?”

He nodded. “The kingslayers.”

He was losing patience, and his temper boiled over as the man tormented him with forgotten stories of their past camaraderie, and even used his beloved nickname. _White Wolf._ “Who the hell are you?” Letho’s plan to use the scoia’tael in Upper Aedirn certainly complicated the plot, but before Geralt could get Letho to talk more, trying to avoid the meeting descending into a blood bath, Iorveth’s calm cracked.

Perhaps it had been the threat to his fellow squirrels far away, the fear that he wouldn’t be able to warn them before Letho’s betrayal cost them their lives too, but whatever it was, the elf’s anger was tinged with panic. Somehow he had freed himself from the binding, and he rasped, “Enough of this farce,” and called his men to action, barking orders in the elder speech.

Out of nowhere, elves rushed in, bows drawn, and Letho drew his sword off his back with a growl. “What game are you playing?”

“One that you just lost.”

Arrows whistled and thudded into flesh, but they were not the arrows of the elves. The thick, deadly bolts were loosed from crossbows, and they embedded themselves in the ribcages of Iorveth’s warriors. Geralt didn’t miss Iorveth’s scream of shock and grief as more of his men were cut down like wheat, but Geralt had no time to do anything other than draw his own sword because that slimy captain of the Blue Stripes, Roche, was standing among the arbalists as well.

“Give me my sword,” Iorveth demanded in a quiet voice. The sadness and anger mixed together in the elf’s body to elite a deadly battle-calm. His single green eye darkened at the sight of the elven corpses, his friends, lying, still warm, some still gasping and bubbling blood, on the turf beneath the roses and the statue of the lovers.

In a flash, Geralt handed it to him. He hadn’t even thought about the consequences, and the beautiful, deadly, curved weapon was in Iorveth’s hands once more as he flew at Roche with a battle cry. The last thing Geralt saw, as he was kicked back into the crumbling masonry, was Iorveth locking blades with the blue jacketed man. He uttered a prayer before his own back hit the floor that the stubborn elf would survive.

The witchers’ dance of death was deadly, Geralt wheeling lightly on his feet, despite his soaked, heavy clothes, and his lungs half full of water where Letho had held him beneath the water with his sheer weight. Letho relied heavily on his monstrous strength, and Geralt, once pinned, had no defence for that. In another few heartbeats though, he was free, on his feet, and locking signs with the other witcher, fighting for his life in a way he hadn’t had to in a long time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Geralt and Iorveth dance a little closer to each other, we see a softer and more vulnerable side of Iorveth, and Geralt rescues some elven women, before Iorveth rescues him right back.

Panic was beginning to settle in Geralt’s lungs when Iorveth stepped into the chamber. He was staring at the floor, his yellow eyes wide with the fear that Letho would think of laying a hand on Triss. Those awful, meaty, violent hands on her soft body was enough to send him into a quiet storming rage.

Iorveth’s easy, graceful steps stirred him from his stupor and he looked up, smelling blood. The elf’s right arm was bandaged tightly across his bicep, but other than that, he seemed unharmed.

“Where’s Roche?” Geralt demanded.

“We killed a few of his men. The rest ran.” The elf scanned the ruined chamber. “Is Letho dead?”

“On his way to Flotsam.” Geralt thought his voice seemed strangely calm now, like the skirmish had taken all his anger from him and left him empty, depleted.

“How do you know?” he asked thoughtfully.

“He wants to find Triss,” the witcher said, his voice cracking.

The elf pumped his fist in anger, a flash of empathy filling his face. “Kill him.”

“You shouldn’t have trusted a dh’oine. Let’s go.”

The elf looked at him oddly. “We can’t go there, Geralt. The _garrison_ …” His tone was one of incredulity.

“Of course,” he groaned. “I forgot what kind of warriors you are.”

Instead of taking it as an insult, Iorveth actually seemed to read his words as a compliment. He flashed Geralt a rare grin, and wished him luck in a fond and rather formal tone. Turning elegantly on his toes, he turned to leave the chamber, leaving Geralt with the memory of that smile and the echoing drips of water in his ears. Maybe one day he’d get to push Iorveth into the water and have his way with him like he had with Triss, but that night was clearly not it. To his surprise, he looked up and saw that the elf had paused in the doorway. Again, he fixed him with that strange, otherworldly stare, and then, like a deer, he was off.

When Geralt emerged a few moments later, he was alone in the still woods, the scent of blood thick in the air from the fight on Cáelmewedd’s summit. It would attract nekkers soon, and he took off at a quick lope through the trees. As he neared the town, however, a new and acrid smell reached his nostrils.

Flotsam was in flames, and the screams of women and children carried on the drifting smoke.

The carnage inside the town walls was unbelievable. He had been in battles and conflict before, but somehow the fact that Flotsam was a forgotten backwater trading post made it all the worse. The stench of blood and burning flesh filled his nose, and he was forced to use the Axii sign over and over to quell the madness and spare the lives of peaceful non-humans as he tore through the streets to reach Dandelion. _Gods_ , he thought, _please let that useless, foppish bard be alright_.

His fingers ached as he used the sign one last time to spare some elves trapped by a mob in the tavern, and once he had got some answers out of the bard who was in a state of high excitement, he began his search for the witness to Triss’ disappearance. Cedric the elf, it seemed, had sobered up long enough to help the sorceress for a while.

He didn’t have time to sniff out Cedric’s trail without help from among the chaos, so he paused just long enough to wrench the stopper out of a bottle of ‘cat’ with his teeth and down the revolting potion. Staggering as the light hit his blown pupils, he forced his senses back under his control and flew out of the inn, down the stairs, and out of the gate into the forest. In no time he saw a heat signature, but it was just a pack of nekker scrambling around, drawn by the smell of blood. He dispatched them with a series of casual, perfunctory strokes of his silver sword as he strode through their midst. He paused only to pick up Cedric’s blood trail before ploughing on through the undergrowth to find the dying elf. There was no way anyone could survive so much blood loss. He just hoped he got to him in time to hear what happened to Triss before Cedric left for greener and kinder pastures.

“Always wanted to die among the trees…” the elf hissed vaguely, supporting himself on one arm in the shelter of a huge tree as the witcher knelt beside him.

Geralt did his best to comfort the elf as he expired slowly before his very eyes, telling the witcher all he could, still trying to help. Geralt blessed his kind heart.

“I tried to protect Triss,” he gulped, and the witcher could have kissed him for that. “But he was fast. Too fast for me.” Anger flared in the pit of his stomach as he heard Cedric’s next words. “He hit Triss before she could cast a spell. He knew how to fight a sorceress…” Cedric coughed and spluttered blood, and told him where they were headed while Geralt tried to comfort him again.

Cedric’s voice was soft as he spoke of the forest calling him, and of trying to do the right thing when the need called for it, but he became more frantic as he brought up his visions. Something in Cedric’s words, the pain in his voice, made Geralt stand. He couldn’t be so close to someone who knew so much of what he shouldn’t. No wonder he drank. No wonder he drowned it all in vodka.

As the elf’s heartbeat began to stutter and fade, his breath rattling in his bloody lungs, the forest seemed to whisper to them. Geralt stooped to be close to him again as he too felt the forest go taut, the air golden and warm. Birds chorused a requiem for him, the waterfall adding its deep base and soft percussion to his funeral. Animals stepped from the shelter of the trees to bid him farewell as Cedric gasped, slipped, and then went limp amongst the arms of the great tree.

Geralt closed his eyes and sighed. Such a terrible waste of life cut him deeply.

It didn’t take long for Zoltan and Dandelion to find him, standing a little way away from the dead elf, lost in thought.

“A bloody monument to human hatred.” Zoltan’s words made Geralt shake with anger, and couldn’t bear the thought of Iorveth and his men being taken there. As much as he needed to know what Roche was up to, he had to warn Iorveth.

While Zoltan turned and made his way for the ruins, Geralt stayed to talk with Dandelion a little while longer. The two of them decided that the best, and most poetic, thing they could do for Cedric’s cooling corpse was to leave it in the soft embrace of the great tree where he had died. Geralt would tell Iorveth when he made it to the summit where the roses grew, and the elf could then decide what to do to honour his friend.

Realising he’d stayed too long between the trees, he bid Dandelion farewell and told him to wait discretely in Flotsam for his return. “Yes, Dandelion, _discretely_. I’m sure you can manage it if you put that clever mind to it.” The look he got from the poet had definitely been worth it.

And then he raced through the forest to find the elven commander. As he crashed into the ruins at Cáelmewedd, he saw Iorveth end his conversation with Ele’yas and turn instead to speak Zoltan.

Geralt interrupted them, and Iorveth asked, “Where is he?” by way of a greeting.

“He forced Triss to teleport them both to Aedirn,” Geralt said, his voice cracking with fear.

“No!” Iorveth’s face fell, the hard lines clouding over. He let more emotion into his voice than Geralt had yet been privy to, and it moved him deeply. “The scoia’tael in Aedirn will pay for my stupidity with their lives.” His quick mind was already racing to react to the new situation, and he began barking orders at Ele’yas to prepare to move out.

Noble, but it was all ‘too little too late’. “That’s two days’ travel on foot,” Geralt pointed out. “You’ll never make it in time.”

“I have a plan,” he said, in the petulant tone of voice a young child concealing an ill-thought out idea. And yet there was something about him, and Geralt glimpsed exactly what it was that made the non-humans flock to him and to his cause.

“What plan?”

“First you must agree to help us.”

So he had not yet earned Iorveth’s trust. “Count me in,” he smiled grimly. “We’ll get Letho together.”

Iorveth’s response warmed him. “Excellent. We’ve no time to lose. We need to capture the prison barge.”

“You want to enter a town where they’re massacring elves?” The thought of Iorveth going there, even as skilled and well supported as he was, filled him with a sick horror. “I take back what I said. You’re not grandiose: you’re mad.”

The elf gave a wry smirk and chuckled, “My mother claimed likewise.” Iorveth began to dismiss him to make preparations, but he knew he had to tell him about Cedric. The elf had betrayed the scoia’tael in trying to forge closer links with humans, but he had loved Iorveth and his brothers in arms.

“Iorveth,” he said, his voice unintentionally deep and nervous. It even cracked a little.

“What is it?”

“May I speak with you alone. There’s something else you need to know.” He didn’t want to put the scoia’tael commander on the spot in front of his men.

He must have conveyed the gravity of his request to him, as Iorveth nodded. The elves knew when they had been dismissed, and melted away from the garden of roses to leave just the witcher and the elf alone.

No point beating about the bush. “Cedric,” he began. “Cedric is dead.”

Iorveth stopped breathing. His reaction confirmed Geralt’s growing suspicion that in Cedric’s days amongst the squirrels, the two had been close. He hadn’t realised how close until he heard Iorveth’s staccato response. “How? By whose hand?”

“Lotho’s. He died protecting Triss.”

Iorveth’s jaw ground, a vein pulsing in his neck.

“I learned of what he did from Margot. And she asked me to give you this,” he handed her letter to him, and he saw the way Iorveth’s hand shook as his fingers closed over it. Instinctively, Geralt raised his hand to Iorveth and placed it gently around his upper arm in a gesture of support and friendship. “He made it a long way out of Flotsam… well into the trees. I found him sheltering in the arms of a great oak. I was with him when he left this world for the sweet apple groves.”

The elf suddenly turned away in a swift movement that was half pirouette, half flounce, and put his back to him, raising his arm in a silently eloquent gesture.

Geralt, too, knew a dismissal when he saw one. “I…” he faltered.

“Leave me.”

“I will,” he said, “But I would say one thing before I go.”

“Speak,” he hissed.

“Cedric spoke of you before he died. He told me that he did what he thought was best, but that he regretted the betrayal.”

“It was no betrayal,” he murmured, his voice melting, becoming fluid and liquid and rich with emotion in Geralt’s ears. “I… I held him in too high regard to belittle his decisions.”

“Too high regard?”

“Aye,” he sighed heavily, full to the brim with regret.

“Forgive me,” Geralt said, stepping closer to him. He knew that tone. “I… I misread… I thought…”

Iorveth turned back to him and Geralt was shocked to see tears running down his harshly hewn face. “You thought what, vatt’ghern?” he scoffed. “That no Aen Seidhe could ever love a face like mine? That perhaps my heart got carved out by you dh’oine along with my eye?” He stepped into Geralt’s body, coming to a halt a hair’s breadth from his face, so close his nose almost touched Geralt’s. The red of his scar was livid, made all the more vibrant by the green forest around him and the scarlet of the bandana which masked the rest of him from view.

The venom in his tone made the witcher reel backwards.

Iorveth was not done, and he unleashed a torrent of acid on him. “He and I were close before you were a mere quickening in some whore’s womb, vatt’ghern,” he snapped, advancing on Geralt with lupine ferocity. Those elven canines only added to the image. “The bond shared by two Aen Seidhe as old as Cedric and me is more than a simple-minded dh’oine like you could ever understand, _witcher_ ,” he spat.

His voice grew jagged as shattered ice.

“He _broke_ me when he betrayed us and yet still I forgave him. You’re not capable of even _beginning_ to understand that kind of love, let alone of feeling it. You…” he choked again, tears beginning to overwhelm him. “You…” He staggered sideways and Geralt watched as Iorveth’s heart cracked. He lunged and caught him as he went down with a wordless cry of grief and folded into the witcher’s chest.

“I’m sorry,” Geralt breathed, holding the elf close to his chest as he wept. Kneeling on the forest floor with the elf pressed against his body, Geralt wrapped his arms gently around Iorveth and cradled him while he shook, hardly able to draw breath. Death, that final gaping end, it seemed was hardest to comprehend for those who live the longest and do not look for its coming.

When, after a while, the shuddering stopped and he drew in a deep breath, Iorveth raised his head and fixed his one green eye on Geralt’s face. “Take me to him.” His voice was like a handful of river gravel in his throat.

Geralt nodded and stood, holding his hand out. Iorveth clasped it and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

Upright, he paused, hand still gripping the witcher’s, and he stared at it for a long time. “I’m sorry,” he said without looking up. “I… I should not have spoken to you like that.”

Geralt shook his head, a strand of his silver-white hair falling forwards into his eyes. “It should have been you with him, at the end,” he said by way of apology and acceptance.

Iorveth regarded him carefully and then let go of his hand. Instead of letting it fall to his side, he brought it to Geralt’s face and tenderly swept the stray strand of hair back behind his ear. “I’m glad he was not alone, Gwynbleidd.”

And then he stepped back and Geralt was able to see the glassy sadness in his eye. With the innocence of those forest animals who had formed Cedric’s mourners and watched over him as he faded, the elf blinked the last tears from his eye.

“This way,” Geralt said, a surprising kindness in his gruff voice as he stepped away and moved towards the path which led off the summit.

Iorveth walked in silence half a pace behind the witcher. None of his warriors, who had gathered around the waterfall at the end of the track, followed him or gave any indication that they had overheard the exchange between the two of them, and Iorveth offered them no explanation as he and Geralt strode away from the clearing.

Cedric’s body lay exactly as Geralt had left him, eyes closed as if in sleep in the arms of the motherly oak that stood guard. Iorveth regarded him at a distance for some time, and then, as Geralt saw his body prepare to take a step forward, the witcher laid a hand on his shoulder, squeezed him gently, and then turned and left.

The scoia’tael’s shoulders trembled beneath his touch, but he nodded his silent thanks and stepped across the last few yards to where his dead friend lay, and Geralt headed back into the forest to wait.

 

While the scoia’tael leader grieved alone for Cedric, Geralt took himself back to the elven ruins. He wondered just how close the two had been. The elves often spoke of love in their lyrical language, and while he knew they had many words for it, the harsh tongue of the dh’oine had relatively few words: affection, fondness, love, desire… He wondered how many of them would fit into Iorveth’s definition of his love for Cedric. That was a road best left untrodden, he thought, and he broke into a light jog to get the journey back to Cáelmewedd over more quickly.

An elf he didn’t recognise stepped forward. “Dh’oine, where is Iorveth?”

“He is saying farewell to an old friend,” he said simply. “Will the company wait here or meet nearer to the town?”

“Our plan was meet outside the walls near the harbour at dusk…”

“I will see you there then,” Geralt said, turning to leave the Aen Seidhe to their own business. “Until then. Va fail.”

“Va fail, vatt’ghern,” the elf said with a stiff cordiality that almost made Geralt smile. It felt like a grudging acceptance into the ranks. Even if he were no more than a stable boy while the rest were Iorveth’s closest knights. He didn’t mind. He had nothing to prove to any of them.

It was a nervous time for Geralt, and he quelled his fear by shredding the tough hides of a couple of endrega and torching a few nekker nests. Finally he decided the elves must have made their preparations, and he pounded through the undergrowth until he caught sight of a knot of green-clad warriors orbiting their commander like he was their sun. And truly, he looked like a hero out of the fables. His face was once again hard as burnished bronze, his lean body all hard lines and taut muscle, ready for action.

Iorveth had stashed his grief behind his usual layers of armour and greeted Geralt with a haughty, “At last!”

Geralt smiled, seamlessly taking the mild insult in his stride.

Iorveth’s plan was reckless – divide and conquer through courage – but to give the commander his credit, when Geralt suggested an alternative plan, he let him speak. He seemed to warm to the idea of subterfuge, of parading himself in mock submission before the town before turning the barge into a floating citadel. _Ever grandiose_ , Geralt smiled to himself. _Never one to pass up the opportunity to put on a show._

“We have to get past the gate…” Geralt warned.

“Piece of lembas,” he snorted when they were alone again, not fifty paces from the gates, concealed by an outcrop of rock. Geralt felt there was a joke in Iorveth’s words, but he didn’t get it. Iorveth clearly didn’t feel like letting him in on the elven in-joke, but instead scoffed and then smiled as he smirked. It was almost as if he were in a good mood. “Nothing, dh’oine. _Lead_.”

Something in his voice snagged in Geralt’s brain at the sound of that word, that intonation. It was like a harmonic that only a wolf hears and which makes him sing for hours in the frozen night. Geralt seemed to come alive, every cell in his mutant body thrumming at the simply-spoken word of command and submission. This time he was gladly, almost gleefully, giving Geralt the reins. “Too bad I don’t have that strap anymore,” he growled.

The scarred lips twitched and he said, “You can use the strap from my headscarf if you like.”

“It won’t come off?”

His relaxed expression stiffened for a moment and he said, as he reached to unbuckle the small, brown leather strap from around his head, “Don’t worry, the knots in the fabric will keep it in place.” His voice was husky and it struck Geralt as unfathomably sad again for just a moment. All the newly-resurfaced fun and playfulness went out of him.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Geralt said gently as he took the small strap from him, “You don’t need to hide from me. I thought I proved that earlier.”

“Would that that were true,” he whispered, more to himself than to the witcher.

Geralt frowned, just doing the buckle up in such a way that Iorveth could easily prod the pin free from the hole to free himself. The witcher froze. “Hey,” he murmured as he fixed the strap around him again, leaning close to Iorveth’s delicate left ear. So close he could have parted his lips and run his tongue along the sharp point of it. Iorveth smelled like moss on sun-warmed summer rocks, like hot iron from a dwarven smithy, and like fresh-cut pine wood. The blood pooled in Geralt’s groin. “Don’t.”

Iorveth shivered almost imperceptibly, and then gave a strange, short, whickering laugh, almost like a horse, and shrugged once. “Come on, let’s get on with it.”

Iorveth’s balance was better on the smooth forest floor, and Geralt, somewhat reluctantly, stayed at a more respectful distance this time.

Blagging their way past the guards, dense as a pair of slugs, was no problem. The elf who had apparently been ‘captured’ ground his jaw which made his cheekbones pop and his neck pulse. While the two guards babbled away, Geralt could hear Iorveth’s teeth grinding and it was all he could do not to turn around and stare. But there were more important things to focus on than his own satisfaction. Important things like stopping a barge load of elven prisoners from being drowned down river.

The cry went up through the town that the witcher had brought in the squirrels’ infamous leader, and in no time those humans who had survived the madness were stepping out onto the streets to jeer at him. The mud was still stained red with the blood of the non-humans and the rancid stink of it filled Geralt’s nose. His only consolation was that fresh-cut pine smell rising off the back of Iorveth’s collar. He stepped a little closer to the elf and was surprised to see his cheekbones were tinged with pink.

“You want to know something funny, Gwynbleidd?” Iorveth murmured as he sensed Geralt move closer. “I made life for these dh’oine a living hell, yet I’ve never been here before.”

Their progress was unhampered as Geralt guided the elven leader down the street, except for the ‘ _ach-ptooh_ ’ of spitting and the occasional curse thrown at the elf, but as they neared the port, two guards blocked the way with their halberds while a third man, impossibly short and ugly, stepped out to confront them. Puffed up with self-importance, he regarded the witcher and then the elf.

“Oi, where you taking that elf?” he barked. His shirt was stained brown with sweat, and he reeked of beer and unwashed soldier.

“It’s Iorveth. Loredo ordered me to put him on the prison barge.”

The man’s piggy eyes went wide. “Fuck me, Iorveth himself!” he gawped.

Iorveth was as disgusted by his proximity as Geralt was, but the way the man was leering made the elf doubly uncomfortable. Tied up, unable to protect himself effectively, he seemed to fight the urge to step closer to Geralt for protection. Instead he lowered his eye and pressed his lips into a hard line. But he rallied and that eye fixed the runty little guard with such a venomous look that Geralt thought the man might just shrivel up and expire on the spot. No such luck. He kept on blathering instead.

“Son of a bitch shot my brother. Mind if I settle the score a little?” he chirped, clearly expecting Geralt just to hand him over so he could do whatever the hell he liked to him.

Yeah. Not likely. Iorveth continued to look down at the little man, blinking his long lashes with a calm hatred that Geralt could almost taste as he spoke. “Stand aside. There’s no time for that.”

“Why not?”

He shook his head. “I have orders to take him to the barge.”

“What are you then, an elf lover?”

 _The only elf I’d give my time to doesn’t seem to want me._ He shot Iorveth a look and found him staring at him instead. He quirked an eyebrow, silently asking if he thought they had time to have some fun with the guard. When he found his expression mirrored in the half of Iorveth’s face that was visible, he couldn’t keep his lips from twisting into a smirk. “Alright, have your fun, but make it quick,” he said to the guard.

Puffed up like peacock, the man drew his hand back and made to punch Iorveth with a haymaker that would have made any peasant proud to have him on his farm. Iorveth, despite being tied up like a yule turkey, ducked low under the punch and brought his forehead to the man’s nose with a crack. You didn’t need to have Geralt’s enhanced hearing to appreciate the soft crunch of cartilage. The yowl the soldier let out made two dogs stop scrapping amongst the ruins of a house and look up and whimper in sympathy.

Geralt chortled and pushed Iorveth forward as the man began to complain and squeal. He cut him off with a sharp gesture and said, “He’s been a soldier longer than you’ve been alive. Don’t blame me if you should have known better. Come on. We don’t have time for this.”

Playfully shoving Iorveth between the shoulder blades, and still laughing, he herded the elf to the barge. Iorveth turned over his shoulder and snarled playfully, “I can’t believe you let him do that. He could have _hurt_ me…”

“Don’t play the victim,” Geralt said with a fond chuckle. “I knew a shit like him couldn’t touch you.”

“Those two by the wagon looked a little tougher,” he retorted darkly. “They could have done some damage.”

“I wouldn’t have let them hurt you.” Something about the way it came out made Iorveth’s feet falter and he stumbled on an uneven plank of the pontoon. One hand flew to the elf’s hip and the other grabbed his shoulder, steadying him instantly. “See?” he murmured in his ear.

“I’m starting to think he might have been right about you, elf-lover,” Iorveth hissed to himself.

Geralt’s brows drew close into a frown, but he wasn’t given time to ask the elf to clarify, because they were at the interrupted by an arbalist demanding to know where there were going. “Oh,” the slack-jawed man breathed when he found out. “Carry on.”

Iorveth’s confidence seemed to wane a bit as he was paraded under the eyes of the guards on the pontoon. He closed himself off again, shrinking into the safety of his familiar scowl, and his muscles tensed. He was ready and silent.

As a beer-bellied guard in a mail coif came to lead him away, Geralt whispered into Iorveth’s beautiful ear, “I’ll take those on the left. You go right.”

He caught the snarl that rumbled out of Iorveth’s throat as he was grabbed roughly and steered towards the hatchway.

A guard with an impressive moustache and a shiny bald head approached him with an arrogant swagger, broadsword hanging loose in his belt. Geralt eyed it, and in a swift movement, had drawn the blade out of his belt and, taking a lesson from Iorveth, clunked him right on the nose with his forehead.

Taking his cue to begin the fray from Geralt, Iorveth let his rage burst free and he rushed his captor with a furious yell, hands still bound, shouldering him violently like a fighting bull until the man fell with a scream overboard. Given that he’d gone beneath the waves with his mouth open in a scream, and with all the mail he was wearing, he would mostly likely never come back up again.

The elf spent too long staring over the sides of the boat and yelling for his men to come out. He hadn’t seen the man running at him on his blind side, with a two hander raised above his head. With baldy’s sword still in his hand, Geralt flung it at Iorveth’s attacker. It wheeled through the air and embedded itself in the man’s chest with a sickening crunch.

Iorveth freed his hands and drew the blade from the man like his chest was no more than a scabbard, and danced lightly back to Geralt. Back to back, shoulder to shoulder, they worked seamlessly, one balancing the other as he staggered, returning the favour by shielding him from an incoming blow, dancing in perfect synchrony in a slowly spiralling wheel of death. Iorveth’s scoia’tael arrived too late to shed even a drop of blood. Geralt and Iorveth had scythed the men down alone.

Panting hard, with the ropes slashed and the barge beginning to drift downstream, Geralt turned to Iorveth and said, “Well, that went alright.”

Iorveth laughed, truly laughed, for the first time, throwing his head back, his Adam’s apple dancing in his throat. “More than alright, I’d say,” he grinned. “Gods, Geralt, you fight like a thunderstorm.”

“And you,” he smiled. “You fight like an Aen Seidhe.”

The elf inclined his head gracefully, and for a moment, Geralt didn’t see the blood red bandana, or the angry, mangled scar on his mutilated face. He only saw the high beauty of his sharp cheekbones, the clean angle of his jaw, the grace of his ear and the intensity of the green in his iris. He bit his lip and stared.

Loredo appeared at the door of his burning tower and screamed at them, making the pair whip round on the deck. His voice didn’t carry over the roar of building flames and the chaos on the shore, but Geralt could see his lips move perfectly. “Sail away and I’ll burn these sluts alive!” he bellowed.

Geralt looked at Iorveth, who had read his intentions if not his words, and was astonished to see his face set hard. “We sail. Our women are prepared to die.”

“Bullshit,” Geralt spat. “No one is prepared to die.”

The elf turned away and stalked down the deck, but Geralt glanced down and saw the pontoon passing by. He had only a split second to make a decision.

In an instant Geralt yelled, “I’m not prepared to let murder happen.” And he flung himself off the ship, landing light as a cat while Iorveth rushed to the ship’s side, shouting his name. He’d seen Loredo fling the torch onto the roof, intending to bring the whole place down with him.

Geralt slashed his way through the guards at the base of the tower, using signs along with his steel until he felt lightheaded, determined to reach the elven women before they burned to death. Staggering into the smoke-filled chamber, he saw them kneeling and bound. Using his dagger to slice the bindings on the first, a brunette with wide, dark eyes, he barked at her to free the next while he turned to a frantic looking blonde in the corner. Choking on smoke, he shoved them onto the balcony and told them to leap. The first two hurled themselves over the railing into the river, but the third was rooted to the spot inside. “Go!” he screamed, coughing as he drew in a lungful of billowing, acrid smoke. “The elves on the barge will pull you out of the water.” But she wasn’t moving. He scooped her up and threw her off the balcony first, just as a huge ball of fire burst through the floor and engulfed the platform.

Fire scorched his back, the metal of the buckles and studs in his leather burning his skin. And then he hit the water. He looked up at the tower as it collapsed in on itself with a deafening boom, and then began to swim for the barge.

The she-elves had been dragged back up onto deck, but the ship was biting into the river at a fair pace. He was going to get left behind. His back screamed at him, his lungs were scorched and fragile, and he just didn’t have the strength. And then he saw Iorveth race up to the stern and lean over. His bow was no longer strapped across his back, and he had taken off his thick, high-collared jacket to reveal only a pale linen undershirt. And then with the grace of a kingfisher, he leapt off the back of the boat and lanced into the water. Around his waist was a long, thick rope, and he cut through the water towards Geralt who was struggling to keep his head above the foul, muddy water of the river.

Iorveth’s hands grabbed him and turned him over onto his back, and the elf waved over his head. Geralt didn’t hear the command, but suddenly they were pulled through the water towards the barge. Iorveth held him tight to his chest as they crashed against the side of the ship, shielding him from the impact with his own body. They flopped onto the deck like landed fish, and Ele’yas snorted, “Look here, boys, we caught ourselves a wolf.”

Geralt spluttered, coughing the water from his lungs, and looked up to see Iorveth standing over him, holding out his hand. His bandana had miraculously stayed in place, despite the impact of hitting the water on his spectacular dive, and he was looking at Geralt with one serious, worried eye. Geralt felt the need to crack the heavy atmosphere, and he raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t kidding about those knots holding,” he grinned, his voice just low enough for Iorveth alone to hear.

“Perhaps I should tie _you_ up for a change,” he retorted as he hauled him to his feet, “That way you might at least make it out of Flotsam without doing something suicidally stupid.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I thought you said you’d leave me behind.”

“I thought I said that as well,” Iorveth said dryly, turning to go below without looking back.

Geralt couldn’t help but admire the way his soaked linen shirt clung to every ridge and curve of tight muscle on him.

Iorveth paused at the top of the companionway and said, “You rescued our women. We are indebted.”

“Help me find the kingslayer and Triss and we’re even,” he countered, ringing the water from his hair.

“In that case, to Vergen. Prepare to set sail!” Iorveth yelled, raising his arm as his warriors set to work with a triumphant shout. The words were a jumble, but there were cries of “ _Scoia’tael_!”, “ _Iorveth_!” and even “ _Gwynbleidd_!”

Iorveth paused as he disappeared below, his head just peeking above the wooden deck, and he fixed Geralt with a strange stare before vanishing below like a rabbit down a hole.

Lightheaded again, he looked down at his hip and saw that he was not only burned all across his back, but that he had a cut which was bleeding sluggishly. “Damn it,” he hissed.

He snatched up his travel sack and ducked below, choosing a quiet corner of the barge, a lonely cell in the prow of the ship where knelt to take care of his wound with practised ease. He stripped his burned jacket off, wincing as the hot flesh on the back of his neck moved, and then laid it down almost ritualistically beside him. He had done this so many times. Then he shrugged out of the soaked shirt and fed it through the bars of the open cell door to dry. The rhythmic dripping of water from the fabric soothed him and he focused on that as he cleaned the wound and pressed a clean dressing into it before binding the bandages around his lower torso.

He checked his potion stash and was grateful that he’d taken the time to mix up a fresh batch. He chugged a few down and wretched as the vile concoctions hit his empty stomach. He fell forward, braced on his arms, and heaved. Nothing came up. He’d not eaten in days. When the sweat broke out over his brow he knew he’d pushed his toxicity levels a bit too high, but he’d needed the tinctures if he was going to be ready to fight again in the morning. And with these squirrels, he knew trouble wouldn’t be far away.

Geralt fished a clean shirt out of his pack and thanked Dandelion for his foresight. Only a few days earlier, before all hell had broken loose in Flotsam, he had demanded that Geralt give him every piece of clothing he hadn’t had on at that moment, and he’d had the tavern keeper’s wife wash it all. It was beautifully laundered, and he smelled the soap that had been used to wash the filth and the sweat out of it. He breathed it in as he sat there, on the verge of a meditative stupor, kneeling with his hands at his hips.

He smelled pine-trees and moss in the sun, with the sharper scent of hot iron. Iorveth.

His cat eyes rolled open and he saw the elf was standing in front of him, wearing dark, loose-fitting linen trousers, with a clean shirt falling loosely around his muscular shoulders. He had removed half of his bandana so that he had only the eyepatch section still covering his face. His hair was damp and it fell softly around his face, half covering the slender strip of cloth that wound around his head.

“You’re hurt?” he asked in a low rumbling voice.

“Nothing that won’t be gone by the morning,” Geralt said. His own words felt thick in his mouth and he was half dazed by the sight of the elf. “Forgive me,” he said. “If I’m not at my sharpest. I just took something for my injuries. It… it’ll wear off in a bit…”

“Drugging yourself up in a dark corner of my ship?” the elf asked archly.

“Coming from you?” Geralt teased. “I’ve smelled the stuff you put in that pipe, Iorveth. I got high just being near you afterwards.”

“You sure that was the pipeweed?” Iorveth smirked, surprising Geralt with his almost flirtatious tone.

“Not entirely.”

His green eye went to the angry burn on the witcher’s forearm and asked, “That your only injury?”

Geralt shook his head. “You don’t think I’d have drunk three rather poisonous potions for a little burn like that?”

“Where else?”

“My hip got cut,” he muttered. “And my back is burned.”

“I’ve just been treating Mottle,” he said. “She told me you bore the brunt of the flames when she froze and panicked. You want some of the salve?” He held a small wooden pot out to him. It smelled delicious, like vanilla and cut grass.

Geralt smiled. “You offering to rub my back?”

Iorveth nodded once.

“Ah, as much as I would like that, I can’t have any more substances in my system right now. Not even a simple herb salve.” He sighed. “I could go into seizure.”

“I’ll come back later then,” Iorveth smiled and set the pot down beside the witcher before turning and striding away down the ship.

“Wait,” Geralt called as his potion-fogged mind recalled something. “Did Vernon Roche sail out of here alright?”

“He’s fine, if that’s what you ask,” he drawled. “We met and chatted. Imagine that.” He looked pointedly at Geralt and added, “I wanted him to know that he was only leaving because I let him do so.”

He smiled blurrily at the elf. _Always the one in control. Why don’t you give it to me for a change?_ he mused, wondering whether he’d said it aloud or only thought it. He couldn’t be sure.

Apparently he’d only thought it, because Iorveth continued in a normal tone of voice. “I found him on my way back from burying Cedric. I wasn’t in the best mood, so I may have given him one or two wounds to lick.”

“He’ll have to lick himself,” Geralt said, his usual filters not quite in place. “Since he’s not got anyone offering to help.”

Iorveth shot a snort of true delight and waved his hand gently. “You just get some rest, Gwynbleidd. I’ll come back later when you’re feeling more like your usual taciturn self.”

He left the witcher alone, the sound of dice rolling and elven laughter reaching his ears as Iorveth opened the hatch to his little solitary cell in the prow of the ship. When the door closed and Iorveth left him in the quiet darkness, with only the slapping water on the sides of the creaking timbers for company, he felt a familiar numbness creeping through the mutated cells of his body and he slipped silently into his meditative state.

Much later that night, as hunger growled in Geralt’s stomach, he sighed and lay back. He was so tired he couldn’t face the thought of moving and going to ask an elf for some food. As the ship rocked and creaked, he lay down under his blanket and willed his body to sleep.

He didn’t hear the footsteps outside his door. He didn’t hear the wooden hatch creak open. He didn’t smell the elven way-bread that was set down quietly beside him. And he didn’t feel the figure slide into the darkness beside him, pulling the blanket up and curling silently up against Geralt’s body.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NOTE UPDATED RATING TO EXPLICIT
> 
> In which Geralt and Iorveth finally close the last few steps in the dance they've been doing around each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it took me so long to get around to writing this. I hope you like it, and thanks for waiting.

Lying on his back, he woke with a start. The sharp burning had faded to a hot prickle deep in the tissue of his skin, and the gash at his hip had closed over to form a pink scar already. But he noticed none of that.

Beside him lay the softly-breathing figure of the scoia’tael leader. He was shirtless, with only those dark linen trousers on, waistband sitting dangerously low on his hips. He was curled on his right side, using his own arm as a pillow, his left arm nestled beside his face, that red bandana back over his head.

“Iorveth?” he whispered.

The elf’s breathing hitched and he drew in a quick, sharp breath as he surfaced from sleep. “Gwynbleidd,” he muttered, his voice thick with sleep.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Brought you some food,” he mumbled dozily.

“You’re offering yourself up to me?” he grinned.

“No, you stupid dh’oine,” he grumbled, pointing vaguely towards the iron bars of the cell. “Lembas.” The cage door was propped open, hooked back on itself, but the thick, wooden hatch into the small solitary cell, which had been unlocked before, was now barred from their side.

Geralt sat up with a grunt and reached for the bread. “I still don’t understand why you stayed here though,” he smirked. “I mean, I didn’t realise this was an all-inclusive, royal river-barge cruise…”

“Not that kind of room service,” Iorveth muttered. He shifted and pushed himself upright, reflexively checking that his bandana was in place. He sighed. “My warriors snore. And you _were_ blissfully silent until a few moments ago.”

“So you helped yourself to my solitude?”

He sighed again and made to leave. “You’re right. I’ll go.”

“Don’t.”

“You want me to stay or leave, Gwynbleidd?” he asked testily.

“I want you to do what _you_ want,” he said, chomping down on the bread, which was excellent. He said so, and Iorveth informed him that a few bites would fill a grown man. Geralt polished off the whole loaf and sat back with a grunt of satisfaction.

“Your back still sore?” he asked. “And are you still stoned?”

Geralt rumbled a laugh. “No,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“I see.”

“I mean, you could put some of that salve of yours on me if you wanted.”

“Oh.”

“Do you?” Geralt pressed.

“What?”

“Want to?” Iorveth seemed uncertain for the first time. Geralt reached for his shoulder and said, “It’s alright, Iorveth. It’s alright not to know what you want.”

The elf, fixed in a position of readiness, one knee bent, the foot about to push him upright, blinked. “Gods, Gwynbleidd,” he hissed. “Are you always so good at reading people, or is it just me?”

Geralt snorted. “I _am_ good at reading people, but you’re not easy. I’ve done a lot of guesswork.”

“And what conclusions have you reached?” he asked haughtily.

“You have to be in control all the time,” he said slowly, watching Iorveth’s face intently. Iorveth nodded. “But you don’t always like it. You want to relax. You want to let go. You want someone to have _your_ back for a change.” The doleful expression in that one green eye almost broke Geralt. “Am I right?”

Silently, Iorveth began to nod.

“You’ve been in charge so long you’ve forgotten how to let go.”

“It’s not just that,” Iorveth rasped.

Geralt turned and sat back on his hip, resting his weight on his right arm while he regarded the elf with his cat eyes. He waited for him to speak again.

He didn’t speak for a long time, and Geralt turned to look at him more closely. Iorveth didn’t miss the wince as he tweaked the burn on his back. Geralt raised his fingers and stretched them down the back of his shirt to test the burns. They had not healed as well as he’d hoped. Perhaps taking all those potions on an empty stomach had been a bad idea after all.

“Off,” Iorveth breathed, jerking his chin up to order Geralt to strip his shirt off.

Geralt smiled and obeyed with a sharp exhalation as his skin stretched painfully. Behind the sigh, he nearly missed Iorveth’s gasp as he saw the exposed skin of Geralt’s back. “I know,” he rumbled. “My tattered hide has seen better days.”

“Gods, Geralt,” the elf swore softly. “I've never seen one as young as you bear so many stories on their skin.”

He huffed a hollow laugh. “Iorveth,” he said flatly. “I know that all the races of the world seem like mayflies to you Aen Seidhe, but you forget that I am outside all that. I am a witcher, a vatt’ghern, a mutant.” He turned his face to look back over his shoulder and said, “I'm not as young as I look.”

The elf stared into his golden eyes and murmured, “I should have known. Your eyes may not be elven, but they’re _Aen Seidhe_ all the same.” He traced his finger over the monstrous slashes across Geralt’s shoulders, making the witcher gasp. “They're old eyes that have seen too much they can't forget.”

“My eyes may not forget, but I'll be damned if _I_ can remember anything…” he groaned. “Half my damned life wiped from my memory. Triss says one of your roses will help to bring it all back.”

“We’ll find your woman,” he sighed, his breath ghosting hot on Geralt’s back.

Geralt turned to glance over his shoulder so that he was facing the elf. “She’s no one’s woman, Iorveth. Mine least of all.”

“But you’ve fucked her, haven’t you?” he asked dryly. “And the way she looks at you, she’d be yours if you asked her, am I right?”

 “I am fond of her, Iorveth,” he admitted, “And I’m not going to lie, she’s a pleasure to plough, but for me it ends there. And she knows it.”

Iorveth smiled. “Ah, for such clarity.”

“You know you just have to ask, right?”

“Easy for you to say, vatt’ghern,” he muttered evasively.

Geralt eyed the pot of salve and said, “Alright. You going to plaster some of that on my tattered carcass or not?”

Iorveth reached for the salve and delved his elegant fingers into it, scooping up a great mound of it and smearing it over Geralt’s shoulders.

He gasped as the freezing ointment, thick as butter, began to tingle on the burns and the scar tissue, burning cold like he’d pressed an icicle onto them. The elf’s hands were gentle as he worked over the steel muscles of Geralt’s upper body, his fingers firm but still sensitive to the painful areas.

Iorveth’s hands were strong and quiet as he worked the ointment into Geralt’s muscles, and then, when he moved to the raw, burned areas, layering the paste on thickly over his skin, his touch turned to a whisper, sweet as summer rain.

Geralt couldn’t help the groan that tumbled out of his parted lips at the sensation, and he heard Iorveth chuckle.

“Good?” the elf asked archly.

“You have no idea,” Geralt said, his voice thick and dark as velvet. “Gods, you have no idea.”

Iorveth only laughed again.

After a long time of sitting quietly in the elf’s gentle care, Geralt spoke up. “Iorveth, can I ask you something?”

“No.”

The answer told him more than he needed. “Please?”

Iorveth’s sigh made gooseflesh ripple across Geralt’s bare back. “I don’t know what I want, Gwynbleidd, and yes, it scares me.”

It took a lot for the elf to admit as much to him, and Geralt twisted to look over his shoulder. His long, white hair snagged on a patch of the ointment, and Iorveth reached to free it with a tenderness that still surprised the witcher.

“Let me heal up a bit,” Geralt said, “And then maybe we can work out exactly what it is you want.” He reached his hand tentatively for the elf’s face and cupped his strong jaw momentarily in his large hand. “Til then, you’re welcome to stay or leave.” He ached to press a kiss into that elven bow of a mouth, to feel his skin, to taste his scars, to feel the hardness of his lean body pressed against him, but the elf was not ready for that. He had spent too many lifetimes barking orders and being obeyed. He was not ready to let go. He’d lost Cedric, loved him and lost him, and he was not ready to let Geralt in with the tenderness he really needed.

Geralt stroked his thumb once across the cheekbone which wasn’t covered by the bandana, and then let his hand fall. Iorveth seemed to have frozen beneath that touch, uncertain of how to act, how to respond. He bit his lip, and then shuffled back. “Alright…” he faltered. “Just let me stay here tonight. I’m not ready for all that noise out there. Let me stay in the quiet. With you.”

Geralt nodded and lay on his stomach so that the paste would have a chance of getting to work on the burns without him smearing it all over the sheets.

When he woke, the sheets beside him were cold, and Iorveth was nowhere to be seen.

He joined him up top, exchanging polite nods with the scoia’tael who were patrolling the deck as he passed, until he came level with the commander.

“Gwynbleidd,” he said, his voice gravelly and intense as ever.

Geralt smiled and stretched carefully, nodding in a mute greeting.

“How are your burns?” Iorveth asked, turning his green eye back on the smooth waters of the river as the barge glided through it, the ropes and stays, canvas and sail creaking softly.

“Almost healed,” Geralt murmured. “Thank you. Did you sleep well?” He arched an eyebrow and received a wicked grin in return.

“I did, thank you,” he said, almost making a mockery of the politeness of the conversation with his own smirk. Iorveth laughed and turned his green eye back to watch the forest as it slid past. He breathed the clean air in and sighed.

They sailed without incident down river towards Vergen for a few more days. Iorveth had not come to his quarters again, but the tension between them crackled palpably.

Side by side, as they had grown accustomed to out on the deck, the two stood quietly in each other’s presence for a long time as afternoon drew itself out into evening. Geralt straightened and cracked his shoulders nonchalantly behind him. “Gonna head back below,” he said.

Iorveth nodded curtly, but didn’t turn fully to look at him. He’d been even quieter than usual that day, and Geralt wasn’t about to press him.

The ship creaked and rolled on the current, but Geralt paid it no mind. He sighed and finally forced himself to sit down and update his bestiary with the various horrible creatures he’d encountered around Flotsam, and then wondered if he should try and meditate a bit more. It’d been a while, and it was good for him to still his spinning senses every now and again. He knelt on the floor of his little cabin, removed his shirt, and placed his hands on his thighs in a practised manoeuvre which already set his breathing steady and his vision blurring.

When he woke to full consciousness, he knew it must have been easily five or six hours later. His body was loose and relaxed, and his mind clear. He blinked. There, lying casually over the soft sheets of his little cabin floor, was Iorveth.

The elf smirked at him when he blinked the stupor from his eyes, and murmured Iorveth’s name. “What are you doing here?”

“I know what I want,” he said bluntly.

“Oh?” Geralt inclined his head.

Iorveth nodded. “You’re right,” he said haltingly, staring at Geralt’s bare torso “And I need this. I…” he swallowed, a light kindling in his eye. “I want you.”

With a low growl, Geralt eased himself up off his knees and crossed to where Iorveth lay on the floor, only a few steps away.

The elf leaned back a little on his elbow, head tilted up, watching the _white wolf_ warily as he approached.

Geralt sank back down to his knees beside him and reached a hand out to touch his stomach. Hard and lean beneath Geralt’s fingers, Iorveth’s chest heaved at the touch and he fell onto his back as the arm supporting him buckled. He let out a soft whisper of a moan as Geralt drew his shirt up and over his head. The bandana stayed in place, masking off the ruined eye and scar, and Geralt ached to see him. To see all of him. But Iorveth wasn’t at that point yet.

Geralt pressed his fingers around the back of Iorveth’s head, tugging at his hair, and pulling him deftly into a kiss that they’d both been aching for.

Something then seemed to ignite inside he elf, and he reared up, hands lacing into Geralt’s long hair, pulling painfully hard, crushing him deeper into the kiss. Iorveth began to bite at Geralt’s lower lip, eye closed, lips working with a passion that had lain quiet for too long.

Geralt felt a tremble run through the elf’s whole body.

“Gwynbleidd,” Iorveth hissed, raking his short nails across Geralt’s shoulders. The flesh was healed but still pink and very sensitive, and Geralt let out a bellow at the sensation, sinking down on top of Iorveth, pressing his body against the elf’s, smirking when he felt how hard the elf had grown so quickly. He ground his hips into Iorveth’s, strong arms bearing his weight as he kissed his way down Iorveth’s jaw and neck, biting and sucking when he got to his perfect collarbones.

Iorveth’s right leg bent suddenly upwards as Geralt sucked a dark bruise into his pale skin, like a fallen plum among the leaves of his tattoo, and the scoia’tael leader let out a deep, earthy rumble of pleasure, hands gripping at Geralt’s hard biceps.

He was panting, slowly losing himself the more Geralt did to him, and Geralt drew back to see the elf finally coming undone. He smiled. It was not the predatory smile of the white wolf, but a tender smile, one that spoke of his affection for the elf, his respect, his admiration. How far he’d come from thinking he was just an arrogant shit sitting on a fallen tree, playing on the stereotype.

“What?” Iorveth snarled. “Why did you stop?”

“Can I not admire you before I fuck you?” Geralt rumbled.

His words let loose another moan from Iorveth and he bucked his hips up to regain the lost contact at their hips. The moment he felt Iorveth’s hot, hard length pressing against him, Geralt began to feel his control cracking.

Iorveth grabbed him and went to kiss him again, but he went still as Geralt reached instead for the back of his head, for the fastening of his bandana. He froze, his eye boring straight into Geralt’s catlike irises, suddenly full of fear. With another smile, Geralt kissed his marble lips, cold and still as stone, until he felt the elf begin to soften a little. “No need to hide,” he reminded him. “But if you tell me not to, I won’t do it.”

Iorveth made no move to stop Geralt from removing the bandana and the patch, but neither did he tell him it was alright. He just lay there, frozen.

“Hey,” Geralt murmured, scrunching his fingers momentarily against the fabric of the bandana. “It’s ok.”

“Don’t patronise me,” Iorveth snarled, his defensive walls returning, brick by brick with each pounding heartbeat.

“I’m not.”

Iorveth revealed his teeth behind his lips as he started to make another acrid comment, but Geralt sat up, backing away. He still straddled the elf though.

“Fuck, Geralt, I don’t want a heart to heart like some _girl_ ,” the elf spat. “I want you to fuck me until I can’t remember, can’t think about, anything that’s happened. That’s what I want.”

Something soured in Geralt’s stomach. “A moment ago you said you wanted me. You didn’t say you wanted to _use_ me.”

With another feral snarl, Iorveth sat up and grabbed Geralt’s face in his hands. He began to kiss him again, yanking his hair til Geralt’s eyes watered. His teeth bit into his lip so hard he was sure the elf would draw blood. Iorveth tilted Geralt’s head back to reveal his neck, and he began to bite his way down Geralt’s pulsing artery. “I _do_ want you,” he rasped. “I do. I just don’t want you to lose _this_ when you see me.” And he rocked his hard length against Geralt’s for emphasis.

“You think I would?” Geralt panted, chin still tipped up, held there by Iorveth’s hand in his hair.

“You wouldn’t be the first.” His words scraped in Geralt’s ears, hurt and anger swirling together.

“You’ve trusted me this far,” Geralt reasoned, bringing his hands up to try again, just as Iorveth raked red lines down his pecs and abs hard enough to make him bite back another bellow.

His fingers found the buckle and the knots in the bandana, and as he removed it slowly, Iorveth’s back stiffened and he hissed in a breath. He lowered his jaw, turning his face away a little, as though to shield Geralt from the full sight of it. No, Geralt thought, not to shield _him_ from it, but to shield _Iorveth_ from the sight of Geralt’s reaction.

The gash tore up his face from his lip, forking like red lightning up his cheek and round the empty socket of his right eye. Blank, dark, and eerily hollow, the hole where Iorveth’s right eye had once been stared blankly out at him. The elf snarled the right side of his lip up, his voice deep and thick with self-loathing. “Happy now, _vatt’ghern_?”

Geralt let the bandana fall to the floor, the heavy leather of the eye patch dropping with a soft flump in the silence that stretched between them. Hands now free, Geralt took Iorveth’s sharp, uncertain face in his hands and kissed him. He didn’t stare at the scar, didn’t linger, though he _knew_ how much that must have hurt. Geralt controlled the force of the kiss this time, taking over wordlessly, holding Iorveth’s wild movements back, like a young colt in a halter, until the contact began to deepen. Feeling replaced lust, and Iorveth relaxed slowly, gradually, while Geralt held him.

In time, Iorveth’s hands returned to Geralt’s body, but he had lost the frantic heat and desperation. Now it was a quieter, gentler need that drove him forward. He pulled Geralt back down, hands on his hips, and Geralt sank down until there wasn’t a chink of air between their bodies.

Rolling free a while later, Iorveth’s hands worked at the waistband of his loose trousers as Geralt undressed, and the last of their clothes were ditched in a corner. Geralt’s thighs were thicker than the elf’s, and where he lacked Iorveth’s smooth, lean, hard grace, he made up for it in raw muscle and hard, white skin.

“The rest of you is as white as your hair,” elf observed, tangling his ankles in Geralt’s for a moment.

As Iorveth’s toe caught the arch of his foot, Geralt let out a groan that cracked in his throat. He had no words now. He wanted Iorveth. He was so hard it almost hurt, the tip of his cock leaking, his balls aching for release. All he could manage was another growl. Finally he managed to grunt, “Oil, in my bag.”

“You get it,” Iorveth chuckled, rolling off him. “I don’t fancy grabbing arachnid oil by accident.”

Geralt laughed and shoved the elf aside, grabbing an innocuous glass phial, stoppered and corked. “Here,” he said, turning back to face him. The breath went out of him at the sight of Iorveth, lying on his back again, just as he had been when Geralt had stirred from his meditation, only this time he was completely naked. His hard muscles shone in the low light in the cabin, his lean legs extended, his cock hard against his pale stomach.

Geralt took his time to admire him, just long enough to show the elf his appreciation, letting his eyes linger on the fronds of the tattooed leaves which curled a surprisingly long way down his body, finishing in a curl like a creeper at his hip bone. He uncorked the phial with a pop and murmured, “Lie on your front for me.”

Iorveth kept his single green eye fixed on his face for just a half heartbeat. He bit his lip, and for a moment Geralt thought all the fight had come back to him at the simply-uttered words of command, but then a shiver trembled through his whole body and he let out a shuddering sigh, rolling over.

Lying on his stomach, Iorveth submitted himself to Geralt.

Geralt knelt beside him once more, and ran his hands up the back of Iorveth’s bare thighs. The elf’s toes curled and he hitched a breath, holding it in his lungs before releasing it. Geralt circled the curve of his cheeks with a strong hand, digging his thumb deep into the muscle and enjoying the way Iorveth clenched tight, nervous, before relaxing again, with a moan this time. Releasing him just long enough to fill his palm with the softly fragrant oil, Geralt retuned his touch to Iorveth, hands coated in oil, and began to play with him.

Iorveth’s breathing doubled, back rising as his lungs worked while Geralt teased the tight ring of muscle between his legs. He nudged them further apart with his knuckles, not wanting to waste the oil, and quietly, silently, almost meekly, Iorveth obeyed.

Head turned to one side, his left side, with his blind side pressed into the rough bundle of shirts Geralt was using as a pillow, Iorveth bit his lip as Geralt carefully sank a finger inside him. His spine stiffened again, and he clenched tightly around Geralt. “Fuck,” the witcher hissed, imagining that tight heat constricting around his cock. “Fuck, you’re so tight, _fuck_.”

“It’s been… a while…” Iorveth panted, tension seeping away as he grew accustomed to the intrusion.

Geralt could no longer resist as he slid a second finger inside Iorveth, and he wrapped his free hand around his own cock, pumping idly along his length, smearing the beads of precome with the motion. Geralt added a third finger, and Iorveth hitched his hips up involuntarily, a sheen of sweat stippling across his perfect shoulder blades, another patch like morning dew forming at the base of his spine. He growled something that got lost in the fabric beside his face, and began to push back against Geralt, breathing hard, trying to stifle his moans.

At last Geralt could stand it no longer. He withdrew his fingers, earning a loud hiss of complaint from Iorveth, and grabbed the elf by his sharp, narrow hips, tugging him up onto his knees with a strength that took Iorveth by surprise. His own cock was slick with oil from his hand, and he pushed the tip gently inside Iorveth.

The elf threw back his head and _moaned_. All his self-control, all his petty snarling comments, all his defences, anything that remained, fell away. “Geralt,” he choked, fingers clenching the sheets beneath him.

“I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve called me by my name,” Geralt smirked. And then he sank himself hilt deep inside the elf.

The heat and tightness alone would have held him there, but the cry that tore from Iorveth’s lips was what lanced him through the chest. High, unabashed, and totally without restraint, Iorveth gave himself to the witcher.

He pushed back, arching his spine, pressing for more, urging Geralt to find that spot inside him. Geralt’s vision blurred and he began to move, tentatively at first, then faster as Iorveth began to shake with pleasure.

Geralt rolled his hips, rocking back and forth, skating his palm up Iorveth’s bare back to the nape of his neck as the strength of Iorveth’s hold on him increased as he coiled further towards his peak. Geralt grabbed at Iorveth’s dark hair, scrunching it painfully in his fingers, yanking his head back.

“Fuck,” Geralt breathed as he increased his speed. The sight of the scoia’tael leader submitting his control, his mind, his body to Geralt urged him further into a careering frenzy. “Fuck.”

The sound of skin slapping together filled the small cabin, the undercurrent of Iorveth’s slurred moans, which tumbled from his lips in a chant of mixed elven and common tongue, driving Geralt wild at the sound of it all.

He released Iorveth’s hair, the elf lowering his forehead to the pillow in relief, arching his back, begging now, wordlessly, for release. Geralt reached around him, listening to Iorveth’s frantic, ragged breathing, and found his cock, hard and leaking. At Geralt’s touch, the elf’s hips lurched in surprise and he cried out.

It only took a few strokes and carefully timed thrusts from Geralt for Iorveth to reach his peak now. A keening yell left him and he shuddered, spilling all over Geralt’s hand, his own stomach, and the bed below.

Without releasing him, Geralt chased his own orgasm almost violently. His cat’s vision went white as he coiled for release, and as he gave himself entirely over to his pleasure, he felt a great jolt run up his spine. Blank with his orgasm, he emptied himself almost silently into Iorveth. A deep, throaty grunt was all the sound he let out as his hips spasmed and his mind fled.

It was a while before he returned to himself, but when he did, he pulled carefully out of Iorveth, earning himself a grunt of complaint from him, before collapsing onto the sheets. Iorveth lowered himself more gracefully beside him, still looking dazed.

After lying there, trying to let his breathing even out, Geralt fumbled blindly by his side for a clean cloth, handing it to Iorveth. Finding a second, he cleaned himself up as best he could, and lay in the half light.

He didn’t want to speak, in case he broke whatever spell they’d created. Iorveth had trusted him, and _plough him_ , if that hadn’t been the best fuck he’d ever had in his entire life. The elf looked uncertain, if still a little blurry around the edges. “You want to stay?” Geralt grated, his voice even hoarser than usual. He held up the corner of the ragged blanket, and Iorveth seemed to deliberate.

“You…” he faltered, gesturing to his empty eye, “You really don’t mind, do you?”

Geralt shook his head.

Iorveth let out a sour snort, the last hint of his prickling pride, before he lay down beside Geralt, fitting his naked body against him, relaxing almost the moment his skin touched Geralt’s. Within moments, Iorveth was deeply asleep with his head on the hollow of Geralt’s shoulder, one arm draped over his stomach.

Geralt did not expect him to be there in the morning, and was surprised to discover that they both lay exactly as they had done when they’d drifted off. Geralt inhaled, and behind the lingering smell of sex in the air and on their skin, he smelled something different. They had come a long way in the night, and he knew they must be almost at Vergen.

His heart skipped a beat at the thought of losing what he had so recently found with Iorveth once they reached the city. He knew that it would happen. He could feel it deep inside him. He resisted the urge to pull Iorveth close, as though he could stop him going by sheer force, and instead looked down at him.

The sheet had slipped off them at some point, and Iorveth’s body was prickled with goosebumps in the chilly dawn air. The elf slept on unaware, breathing softly across Geralt’s chest. His blind eye was pressed into the witcher’s shoulder, hidden from view, but the memory of it would remain in Geralt’s mind. He shuddered at the brutality of what had been done to him. There was a reason witchers remained neutral in the wars of kings and queens. The killing of people, humans and non-humans alike, never sat well with him, but torture? That riled him in a way that made his words tangle in his throat. There was enough evil and violence without inflicting it on each other.

Stroking Iorveth’s hair once, he eased himself out from under the elf and covered him with a sheet, smiling at the trust the elf had lent him at last. Dressing, silent as a shadow, he slid out and left the scoia’tael leader to sleep on. Heaven knew he needed the rest.

Seeking Dandelion and some breakfast, Geralt kept his thoughts to himself, and to his relief, no one acted strangely around him. He assumed none of Iorveth’s company had heard, but the light dancing in Dandelion’s eyes made him wary.

As he tucked into a meagre breakfast of stale bread, he cast his old friend a warning look. Innocent as a lamb, Dandelion held up his hands, quill balanced perfectly, and silently promised both not to ask and not to tell.

Geralt grunted in satisfaction and returned his attention to his food.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is my first Witcher II fanfiction. Playing the game I absolutely fell in love with Iorveth, and wondered whether Geralt would also warm to someone who is as feisty as he is... 
> 
> Kudos and comments would be appreciated, but I'm just happy you read to the end of the chapter :D.


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